National CPS News Archive

National News Coverage

Enjoy Free Admission to over 1,400 participating museums and cultural venues nationwide to anyone presenting a Museum Day Ticket...for free.

In the spirit of Smithsonian Museums, who offer free admission everyday, Museum Day Live! is an annual event hosted by Smithsonian magazine in which participating museums across the country open their doors to anyone presenting a Museum Day Ticket...for free.

Walking through a couple of big box stores this past week, I couldn't help but notice the displays of back-to-school gear. Lists for what to buy for each school were conveniently displayed next to the racks of products.

You don't have to go there, either. There is an alternative. Imagine the possibilities of homeschooling. This year, ask yourself this question: "What if we homeschooled?" What if you walked past the lists this year? You could look around for what was interesting and find what appealed to your child. Your children could purchase what they needed for their own use and not worry about recommendations and sharing with the class.

I don't know how most people spend their second morning home schooling. I spent mine hyperventilating into a paper bag.

For two years leading up to this I had watched my daughter convince experienced, well-meaning teachers that she was incapable of mastering long division when, in fact, she simply didn't like long division. Alice's ploy raised a larger concern: At age 9, she appeared to be cruising along in school without actually doing any work. To my sorrow, it appeared I had given birth to myself, another pleasant slacker fated to a lifetime of successfully studying for midterms between classes until barely paying attention stopped working. Alice wasn't learning how to learn, she was learning how to coast. Maybe I could wait and see if she came to learning on her own. Or maybe she needed a different kind of education.

Between deciphering college financial aid awards and settling into a shoe-box sized dorm room with a perfect stranger or two, making the move from high school to college can be a shock to the system for even the most put-together teenager.

The transition, many may assume, would be even more jarring for students coming from a home-schooled environment. "Transitioning from home school to college can be a daunting experience, especially with the lack of socialization that is associated with home schooling," says Los Angeles-based therapist Karen Hylen, who counsels people she says have not made the transition successfully.

The drop results primarily from a shift in the policies and practices of state and county child welfare agencies. Many have shortened stays in foster care, expedited adoptions and expanded preventive support for troubled families so more children avoid being removed from home in the first place.

Victoria - WAVERLEY'S sole foster care service is being forced to turn away vulnerable teens because there aren't enough homes for them to go to.

Waverley Emergency Adolescent Care is being crippled by an "enormous" increase in the number of teens who desperately need a place to stay. The service's chief executive Maureen Buck says the organisation is struggling to keep up with demand.

We have a lot of drama surrounding our food more so now than ever before. The news is littered with talk of pink slime, GMOs, organic, hormone-free, and local. And this is just the start of all the details we get caught up in regarding what we eat.

While these are serious issues to consider, a little perspective makes me happy that these are my most common food concerns. In China, people deal with so many issues of contamination and unsanitary cooking conditions that they have gone so far as to raise McDonald's on a pedestal. In fact, the Chinese see McDonald's as a trusted, safe and healthy food option.

The number of U.S. children in foster care has dropped for the 6th straight year, falling to about 400,000 compared to more than 520,000 a decade ago, according to federal figures demonstrating the staying power of reforms even amid economic turbulence.

The drop results primarily from a shift in the policies and practices of state and county child welfare agencies. Many have shortened stays in foster care, expedited adoptions and expanded preventive support for troubled families so more children avoid being removed from home in the first place. The new figures released by the Department of Health and Human Services show there were 400,540 children in foster care as of Sept. 30. That's down from 406,412 a year earlier and from about 523,000 in 2002.

Australia - A toddler who died in the care of an elderly woman was placed with her largely because there were no other foster parents available, an inquest has been told.

Two-year-old Luke Borusiewicz died in hospital on January 12, 2009, after he fell from his bed while in foster care. At the inquest into his death on Thursday, former Families Plus placement support worker Colleen Lowe said the organisation had tried urgently to find a foster carer for Luke before Christmas 2008.

Ireland - Child welfare and protection services in the Health Service Executive (HSE) are to be regularly inspected by the country's safety watchdog to see if they are meeting new mandatory standards.

The inspections are aimed at discovering weaknesses in the care and protection of children in the 17 childcare areas. A set of standards, which HSE services must comply with at local, regional and national level, were drawn up after consultation by the Health Information and Quality Authority which will conduct the inspections.

Finland - Child welfare has taken a downward turn in Finland, according to an international report issued by Save the Children. In the previous review, Finland was placed second in terms of child welfare.

Now the country is in fourteenth place. Topping the league now are Japan and Spain. In the survey, countries were graded into a league table by comparing mortality, under-nourishment and school attendance statistics.

Yet another child from Russia suffered from the hands of foster American parents. According to the local government, a week ago, a boy of eight escaped in the night from the house where he lived and knocked on the neighbors door.

As reported on Wednesday in the consular department of the Russian Embassy in Washington, the boy's name is Daniel Kruchina, born in the Russian city of Tula in 2003. He was adopted by Matthew and Amy Sweeney in 2006 who gave him their second name and the name of Daniel Alexander. The family lives in the town of Bristow in Virginia, according to local authorities.

LLOYDMINSTER, SK - The Saskatchewan Social Services Ministry is conducting an internal review of the foster care system after a man with 85 prior convictions pleaded guilty to the death of a 13-month-old boy left in his care.

On July 20, Allen Charles Davidson, 38, of Paradise Hill, SK, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in relation to the death of Genesis Vandell Parenteau-Dillon. Davidson, who was dating Genesis' foster mother, Cheryl McLellan, was looking after the boy on Nov. 1, 2011, when the child suffered life-threatening injuries.

WASHINGTO - Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made more than 1.3 million requests for consumers' cellphone records in 2011, an alarming surge over previous years that reflected the increasingly gray area between privacy and technology.

Cellphone carriers, responding to inquiries from a member of Congress, reported responding to as many as thousands of police requests daily for customers' locations, text messages and call details, frequently without warrants. Special legal teams operating round-the-clock have been set up to field requests, and some carriers hoping to recoup their costs have created detailed menus of what records can be provided-and for what price.

Once upon a time, all you needed to be an organic farmer in America was a pair of Birkenstocks and a commitment to keep your products chemical-free. Those idealistic days of the 1990s are long gone.

Today, organic farming is a $30 billion industry dominated by Big Agriculture, backed up by Uncle Sam and a federal rulebook that gets longer every day. Today, the National Organic Standards Board keeps a list of 250 nonorganic food additives that can be used under the "certified organic" label. That's three times the number listed just 10 years ago. As the Soviets proved time and again, a good central committee can kill just about anything. Only a few farmers saw this coming.

Canadian foster care services are similar to American social services in that they aim to provide safe and nurturing environments for children in need.

Children who are referred to social services such as foster care are usually the victims of maltreatment of some kind. The types of abuses that these children experience vary but include neglect, sexual abuse, endangerment, physical violence, and emotional abuse.

Divorce is ugly. Two people sever the emotional and physical ties that held them together in the most intimate of bonds. Their kids are left confused and angry. Some parents might even use their children as pawns to spite a former spouse.

Family courts intrude, dividing property and custody rights. In paternity or child custody hearings, parents who never married experience similar ordeals. But what happens when these "non-couples" disagree about homeschooling? Some, like Brenda Kurowski, learn the hard way that family courts can step in and force their children to enroll in public school.

The young man who was sexually assaulted by a former foster care worker has filed a civil lawsuit that names his attacker, the foster home's supervisor, and the director of child welfare for the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The 19-year-old victim, identified in court documents only by the initials J.D., filed a lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court in May. At the core of the lawsuit are allegations that the ministry and the foster care home's supervisor knew of the attacker's troubled history, and still allowed him to supervise J.D.

A JUDGE has "reluctantly" returned four girls to the temporary care of their mother -- accused of abducting them from Italy in violation of international law -- after one of the sisters threatened to kill herself.

Family Court judge Peter Murphy last night ordered the Italian-born children -- who are aged between nine and 15 and at the centre of a bitter international custody battle -- immediately be removed from foster care and returned to their mother on the Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane.

Babies will be placed with foster families who want to adopt them under plans to reduce the disruption to children in care.

It currently takes over two years for a child to be adopted, with babies passed between foster parents and carers before they finally find a permanent home. Child experts have warned that severe upheavals early in life are emotionally and mentally damaging for youngsters. Now David Cameron has said he is determined to speed up the adoption process.

The Alliance for Food and Farming, a front group for pesticide sprayers, is demanding that we cease publishing our list showing which fruits and vegetables carry the highest levels of pesticide residue.

Conventional growers would rather that consumers--that is, their customers--not have that information before they walked into the supermarket. Millions of Americans have come to rely on EWG's Shopper's Guide so they can eat plenty of healthy organic and conventional fruits and veggies without a bunch of pesticides. The AFF will have none of it. Its members want EWG to take down the Dirty Dozen (listing the 12 most pesticide-laden sorts of produce) immediately!

In a shocking incident that resembles the tragedy of battered baby Falak, a five-year-old girl was inflicted with severe burns, beaten up and starved allegedly by her foster parents in West Godavari district.

The girl has been admitted to a hospital with multiple burns caused by hot spoon being put on her body, multiple rib fractures and head injuries. The girl is the third daughter of Konagala Apparao and his wife Devi of Tadepalligudem in the district. Following the death of her husband and driven by poverty. The two elder girls were admitted to an orphanage in nearby Rajahmundry. The foster mother allegedly brutally tortured the girl, police said.

In a shocking incident that resembles the tragedy of battered baby Falak, a five-year-old girl was inflicted with severe burns, beaten up and starved allegedly by her foster parents in West Godavari district.

The girl has been admitted to a hospital with multiple burns caused by hot spoon being put on her body, multiple rib fractures and head injuries. The girl is the third daughter of Konagala Apparao and his wife Devi of Tadepalligudem in the district.

Dow's pesticide Dursban was banned for home use, but continues to be sprayed on our food despite horrific health threats.

Endocrine disruptors, synthetic chemicals that mimic and interfere with natural hormones, lurk everywhere from canned foods and microwave popcorn bags to cosmetics and carpet-cleaning solutions. The chemicals, which include pesticides, fire retardants and plastics, are in thermal store receipts, antibacterial detergents and toothpaste (like Colgate's Total with triclosan) and the plastic BPA which Washington state banned in baby bottles. Endocrine disruptors are linked to breast cancer, infertility, low sperm counts, genital deformities, early puberty and diabetes in humans and alarming mutations in wildlife. They are also suspected in the epidemic of behavior and learning problems in children which has coincided, many say, with wide endocrine disruptor use.

At Andrea Giancoli's community nutrition classes, participants bring in cans and bottles of whatever they typically drink every day, from sodas and fruit juices to sweet teas.

The focus on sugary drinks comes as two out of every three Americans is overweight or obese and policymakers take aim at sugary drinks, from New York City's cup-size restriction to new efforts to impose drink taxes and cut sales in U.S. schools.